Saab: China’s Youngman submits new $2 billion offer

The founder of China’s Youngman – Pang Qingnian – has revealed Youngman submitted a $2 billion offer to buy Saab from the administrators on 14th February.

We’ve all seemingly written-off Saab as dead and buried; a once proud marque consigned to the scrap heap of history after the debacle of GM ownership and Victor Muller’s ill-fated battle to make Saab an in dependent marque.

But there’s one man who hasn’t given up hope of securing a future for Saab, and that man is the Chinese billionaire founder of Youngman, the company which has already spent significant sums trying to acquire Saab, but has so far been thwarted by GM’s golden bullet.

Now, in an interview with Swedish Newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Pang has revealed that Youngman has submitted a new bid for Saab in its current entirety – a bid thought to be worth $2 billion – and is prepared to pay more, if the administrators can prove extra worth, and is willing to invest a further 12 billion yuan to put Saab back in play.

Pang says that the deal will be resolved in the nest ten days, and revealed that Youngman tried to acquire Saab before Victor Muller arrived, but were given short shrift by GN. He also says that Youngman will keep manufacturing in Trollhatten of they are successful in acquiring Saab as ‘…the rich in China prefer cars produced and developed in the West.’

Rachel Pang – Pang’s daughter who is Youngman’s President of Auto Production – also reveals Youngman are prepared to spend $2 billion on finishing the development of the Saab Phoenix Platform and developing new models on it, but the starting point will be to build the current Saab 9-3 at Trollhatten with a diesel engine and auto ‘box not covered by GM’s technology.

Don’t bet against Pang getting his way.

UPDATE: There is some doubt about the veracity of the sums quoted in this article. Svenska Dagbladet do quote the bid as $2 billion and the planned investment as $12 billion. But it could be 2 billion Swedish Crowns ($300 million) for the bid and 12 billion Swedish Crowns ($1.8 billion) for investment. We’ll update again once we’ve got confirmation. But it does seem likely the bid is actually $300 million.